12 Ways To Engage And Retain More Customers On Your Website
So, your SEO, PPC, and other channels are working great and you’re getting tons of traffic to your website. That’s fantastic, except there’s one problem.
The high bounce rate!
This means your visitors are not engaging with your content. They are not sticking around! This could be because they are not finding your content engaging or relevant.
You can tell this by the number of shares and comments on your posts.
So, what can you do to engage your customers and retain them on your website?
Actually, you can do a number of things. Here are a few ways to captivate customers and compel them into interacting with your content. The engagement can be with your call to action buttons, videos, lead forms, or whatever else you want them to engage with on your website.
Here’s how you can build engagement on your website:
1. Mention Influencers
How would you feel if you saw your name in a blog post on another site, mentioned in a positive way, of course? Isn’t it going to pique your interest in that post, website and content creator?
When you mention or quote someone, you create a personal bonding between that person and your brand. That person is going to read the entire post, share it with his/her connections, and most probably, is going to return to your website. Try and involve influencers in your content.
This could be with the help of quotes or media mentions which you have got.
2. Answer Common Questions
There are several platforms to figure out what kind of questions your customers are asking and these can be some great fodder for blog ideas, FAQs, and even your tutorials. You can discover your customers’ burning questions on Quora, Amazon reviews, Reddit, Yelp, social media and many other places (including your store or office). Make it a point to answer their key questions in your written or visual content.
After you publish the post or video answering a popular question, reach out to the people who asked that question on the same platforms. Leave a summary there and invite them to your website. They’re going to love it.
3. Send Email Notifications
Notify the customers on your mailing list whenever you publish new content. You can start an email newsletter and ask your visitors to subscribe to it. Include your recent posts in your newsletter. You can feature the topics along with a portion of the content and a link to your website if someone wants to ‘read more’.
This way, your content doesn’t have to sit idle and get dated.
4. Be Open And Transparent
Online customers like to engage with brands that they consider open and honest. Make sure you’re not holding your cards to your chest. If you manufacture products, feature your production facilities and crews. If you’re a services business, feature your employees and customers. If you’re a food business, do not shy from showing your kitchen and so on.
Customers love this kind of content and engage better. Do not let your customer feel you’re hiding information from them.
5. Publish Content Regularly
How can you expect your customers to visit your website regularly if you’re publishing new content once in a blue moon? Active and engaging websites continuously update their content and keep their customers coming back to check out what’s new. Make a content plan and stick to your publishing calendar.
6. Create Valuable Content
In order to be valuable, your content needs to be relevant first. Make sure you’re creating content for your customers and not for search spiders or ghosts. For that, you’ll need to profile your target market and create ‘ideal customer personas’. Learn who your customers are and speak to them in a voice that resonates with them.
Make sure your content is unique and contains information in a way that is hard to find elsewhere.
7. Offer Incentives
It is always ‘give and take’. If you want your customers to engage with your website, you should offer them something in return. For example, you can offer your visitors a small discount or a free download for subscribing to your newsletter. Or offer them a free gift through a lucky draw and ask them to share your post in order to participate.
8. Offer Live Chat
Your customers will leave your website the moment they feel confused because they’re unable to access the information they need. Live chat holds them back by offering one-on-one interaction with a real person. The language and timings of the live chat are also important. For example, you can make the live chat panel pop out if the customer is wandering aimlessly or is about to leave the website.
Gamification involves integrating elements of gameplay into your website. These may include point scoring, peer to peer contest, gaming rules, prizes, etc. Gaming elements encourage your users to engage with your website and participate in an activity. This can increase the stickiness of your website. Here’s a perfect example of gamification where the visitors have to provide their email address to participate in a ‘wheel of fortune’ style game. Spinning the wheel earns them a discount, encouraging them further to make a purchase.
10. Integrate Social Media
You don’t have to be a genius to figure you need to have social plug-ins on your website these days. But that’s just the start. You should encourage your visitors to share your content on social media by offering incentives. Some websites feature their Facebook comments or tweets on their websites. This serves the dual purpose of increasing the visitor’s page stay and earning their trust.
11. Tell Stories
People don’t like to read about products unless they really have to, such as when making an important buying decision. However, they love reading stories even when they don’t have to read them. That’s why you should ‘storify’ your content. Feature your real-life customers in your real-life stories. You’ll find out that your customers can’t seem to get enough of the stories.
12. Use Customer Surveys
There’s no harm in hosting customer surveys on your pages to collect ‘voice of customer’ (VOC) insights. Tools such as Qualaroo or Survicate can help you create engaging survey pop-ups (like the one below). Surveys give your customers another reason to stay on your website. Just as some of the users engage with your questions, you can collect systematic information about your visitors’ experience.
Final Words
You’ve worked hard to get customers to your website. You don’t want to see them riding into the sunset. These 12 things we just mentioned can make your website much more engaging. Are you using some of these elements on your website? We can help you integrate all of them and more.
Get in touch with us if you need any assistance with customer engagement or retention.
